E 

415 


EULOGY 


ON 


CHIEF-JUSTICE  CHASE, 


.DELIVERED    BY 


VTILLIAM    M.    EVABTS, 


BEFORK    THI. 


ALUMXI   OF   DARTMOUTH   COLLEGE,  AT   HANOVER,  JUNE   24,  1874. 


NEW  YORK  : 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

549   AND   551    BROADWAY. 

1874. 


ENTERED,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1874,  by 

D.  APPLETON  &  CO., 
In  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


EULOGY 


CHIEF-JUSTICE    CHASE. 


ME.  PKESIDEXT  AND  GENTLEMEN,  THE  ALUMNI  OF  DART 
MOUTH  COLLEGE  :  When,  not  many  weeks  since,  the  com 
mittee  of  your  association  did  me  the  honor  to  invite  me  to 
present,  in  an  address  to  the  assembled  graduates  of  the  college, 
a  commemoration  of  the  life,  the  labors,  and  the  fame  of  the 
very  eminent  man  and  greatly  honored  scholar  of  your  disci 
pline,  lawyer,  orator,  senator,  minister,  magistrate,  whom  living 
a  whole  nation  admired  and  revered,  whom  dead  a  whole  na 
tion  laments,  I  felt  that  neither  a  just  sense  of  public  duty  nor 
the  obligations  of  personal  affection  would  permit  me  to  decline 
the  task.  Yielding,  perhaps  too  readily,  to  the  persuasions  of 
your  committee  that  somewhat  close  professional  and  public 
association  with  the  Chief  -Justice  in  the  later  years  of  his  life, 
and  the  intimate  enjoyment  of  his  personal  friendship,  might 
excuse  my  want  of  that  binding  tie  of  fellowship  in  a  commemo 
ration,  in  which  the  venerated  college  does  dutiful  honor  to  a 
son,  and  the  assembled  alumni  crown  with  their  affection  the 
memory  of  a  brother,  I  dismissed  also,  upon  the  same  persua 
sion,  all  anxious  solicitudes,  which  otherwise  would  have  op 
pressed  me,  lest  importunate  and  inextricable  preoccupations  of 
time  and  mind  should  disable  me  from  presenting  as  consider 
able,  and  as  considerate,  a  survey  of  the  eminent  character  and 
celebrated  career  of  Mr.  Chase  as  should  comport  with  them,  or 
satisfy  the  just  exigencies  of  the  occasion. 


M72611 


The  commemoration  which  brings  us  together  has  about  it 
nothing  funereal,  in  sentiment  or  observance,  to  darken  our 
minds  or  sadden  our  hearts  to-day.  The  solemn  rites  of  sepul 
ture,  the  sobbings  of  sorrowing  affection,  the  homage  of  public 
^grief,  the  .concourse  of  the  great  officers  of  state,  the  assem 
blage  of  venerable  judges,  the  processions  of  the  bar,  of  the 
t :  fclerg}r,{  of-  -liberal  and  learned  men,  the  attendant  crowds  of 
citizens  of  every  social  rank  and  station,  both  in  the  great  city 
where  he  died,  and  at  the  national  capital,  have  already  graced 
his  burial  with  all  imaginable  dignity  and  unmeasured  rever 
ence.  To  prolong  or  renew  this  pious  office  is  no  part  of  our 
duty  to-day.  Nor  is  the  maturity  or  nurture  which  the  college 
gives  to  those  it  calls  its  sons,  bestowed  as  it  is  upon  their  mind 
and  character,  affected  by  the  death  of  the  body  as  is  the  heart 
of  the  natural  mother ;  nor  are  you,  his  brethren  in  this  foster 
care  of  the  spirit,  bowed  with  the  same  sense  of  bereavement 
as  are  natural  kindred.  The  filial  and  fraternal  relation  which 
he  bore  to  you,  the  college  and  the  alumni,  is  hardly  broken  by 
his  death,  nor  is  he  hidden  from  you  by  his  burial.  His  com 
pleted  natural  life  is  but  the  assurance  and  perpetuation  of  the 
power,  the  fame,  the  example,  whieh  the  discipline  and  culture 
here  bestowed  had  for  their  object,  and  in  which  they  find 
their  continuing  and  ever-increasing  glory.  The  energy  here 
engendered  has  not  ceased  its  beneficent  activity,  the  torch  here 
lighted  still  diffuses  its  illumination,  and  the  fires  here  kindled 
still  radiate  their  heat. 

Not  less  certain  is  it  that  the  spirit  of  this  commemoration 
imposes  no  task  of  vindication  or  defense,  and  tolerates  no  tone 
of  adulation  or  applause.  The  tenor  of  this  life,  the  manifesta 
tion  of  this  character,  was  open  and  public,  before  the  eyes  of 
all  men,  upon  an  eminent  stage  of  action,  displayed  constantly 
on  the  high  places  of  the  w^oiid.  No  faculty  that  Mr.  Chase 
possessed,  no  preparation  of  mind  or  of  spirit,  for  great  under 
takings  or  for  notable  achievements,  ever  failed  of  exercise  or 
exhibition  for  want  of  opportunity,  or,  being  exercised  or  ex 
hibited,  missed  commensurate  recognition  or  responsive  plaudits 
from  his  countrymen.  His  career  shows  no  step  backward, 
the  places  he  filled  were  all  of  the  highest,  the  services  he  ren 
dered  were  the  most  difficult  as  well  as  the  most  eminent.  If, 


as  the  preacher  proclaims,  "  time  and  chance  happeneth  to  all," 
the  times  in  which  Mr.  Chase  lived  permitted  the  widest  scope 
to  great  abilities  and  the  noblest  forms  of  public  service ;  and 
the  fortunes  of  his  life  show  the  felicity  of  the  occasions  which 
befell  him  to  draw  out  these  abilities,  and  to  receive  these  ser 
vices.  Kot  less  complete  was  the  round  of  public  honors  which 
crowned  his  public  labors,  and  we  have  no  occasion,  here,  to 
lament  any  shortcomings  of  prosperity  or  favor,  or  repeat  the 
authentic  judgment  which  the  voices  of  his  countrymen  have 
pronounced  upon  his  fame. 

The  simple  office,  then,  which  seems  to  me  marked  out  for 
one  who,  assumes  this  deputed  service  in  the  name  of  the  col 
lege  and  for  the  friends  of  good  learning,  is,  in  so  far  as  the 
just  limits  of  time  and  circumstance  will  permit,  to  expose  the 
main  features  of  this  celebrated  life,  "  to  decipher  the  man  and 
his  nature,"  to  connect  the  true  elements  of  his  character  and 
the  moulding  force  of  his  education  with  the  work  he  did,  with 
the  influence  he  wielded  in  life,  with  the  power  of  the  example 
which  lives  after  him,  and  always  to  have  in  view,  as  the  most 
fruitful  uses  of  the  hour,  his  relations  to  the  men  and  events  of 
his  times,  and,  not  less,  his  true  place  in  history  among  the 
lawyers,  orators,  statesmen,  magistrates  of  the  land.  Vera  non 
verla  is  our  maxim  to-day ;  truth,  not  words,  must  mark  the 
tribute  the  college  pays  to  the  sober  dignity  and  solid  worth  of 
its  distinguished  son. 

Born  of  a  lineage,  which  on  the  father's  side  dates  its  Ameri 
can  descent  from,  the  Puritan  emigration  of  1640,  and  on  the 
mother's,  finds  her  the  first  of  that  stock  native  to  this  country, 
the  son  of  these  parents  took  no  contrariety  of  traits  from  the 
union  of  the  blood  of  the  English  Puritans  and  the  Scotch  Cov 
enanters,  but  rather  harmonious  corroboration  of  the  character 
istics  of  both.  These,  sturdy  enough  in  either,  combined  in 
this  descendant  to  produce  as  independent  and  resolute  a  nature 
for  the  conflicts  and  labors  of  his  day,  as  any  experience  of  trial 
or  triumph,  of  proscription  or  persecution  suffered  or  resisted, 
had  required  or  supplied  in  the  long  history  of  the  contests  of 
these  two  congenial  races  with  priests  and  potentates,  with  prin 
cipalities  and  powers.  Nothing  could  be  less  consonant  with  a 
just  estimate  of  the  strong  traits  of  this  lineage,  than  which 


neither  Hebrew,  nor  Grecian,  nor  Roman  nurture  has  wrought 
for  its  heroes  either  a  firmer  fibre  or  a  nobler  virtue,  than  to  as 
cribe  its  chief  power  to  enthusiasm  or  fanaticism.  Plain,  sober, 
practical  men  and  women  as  they  were,  there  was  no  hard  detail 
of  every-day  life  that  they  were  not  equal  to,  no  patient  and 
cheerless  sacrifice  they  could  not  endure,  no  vicissitude  of  adverse 
or  prosperous  fortune  which  they  could  not  meet  with  un 
checked  serenity.  If  it  be  enthusiasm  that  in  them  the  fear  of 
God  had  cast  out  the  fear  of  man,  or  fanaticism  that  they  placed 
"  things  that  are  spiritually  discerned "  above  the  vain  shows 
of  the  world  of  sense,  in  so  far  they  were  enthusiasts  and  fanat 
ics.  In  every  stern  conflict,  in  every  vast  labor,  in  every  intel 
lectual  and  moral  development  of  which  this  country  has  been  the 
scene,  without  fainting  or  weariness  they  have  borne  their  part, 
and  in  the  conclusive  triumph  of  the  principles  of  the  Puritans 
and  their  policies  over  all  discordant,  all  opposing  elements, 
which  enter  into  the  wide  comprehension  of  American  nation 
ality,  theirs  be  the  praise  which  belongs  to  such  well-doing. 

The  son  of  a  farmer — a  man  of  substance,  and  of  credit  with 
his  neighbors,  and  not  less  with  the  people  of  his  State — young 
Chase  drew  from  his  boyhood  the  vigor  of  body  and  of  mind 
which  rural  life  and  labors  are  well  calculated  to  nourish.  Sev 
eral  of  his  father's  brothers  were  graduates  of  this  college,  and 
reached  high  positions  in  Church  and  State.  An  unpropitious 
turn  of  the  commercial  affairs  of  the  country  nipped,  with  its 
frost,  the  growing  prosperity  of  his  father,  whose  death,  soon 
following,  left  him,  in  tender  years,  and  as  one  of  a  numerous 
family,  to  the  sole  care  of  his  mother.  With  most  scanty  means, 
her  thrift  and  energy  sufficed  to  save  her  children  from  igno 
rance  or  declining  manners ;  maintained  their  self-respect  and 
independence;  set  "them  forth  in  the  world  well  disciplined, 
stocked  with  good  principles,  and  inspired  with  proud  and 
honorable  purposes.  To  the  praise  of  this  excellent  woman, 
wherever  the  name  of  her  great  son  shall  be  proclaimed,  this, 
too,  shall  be  told  in  remembrance  of  her:  that  a  Christian's 
faith,  and  a  mother's  love,  as  high  and  pure  as  ever  ennobled 
the  most  famous  matrons  of  history,  stamped  the  character  and 
furnished  the  education  which  equipped  him  for  the  labors  and 
the  triumphs  of  his  life.  One  cannot  read  her  letters  to  her  son 


in  college  without  the  deepest  emotion.  How  many  such  women 
were  there,  in  the  plain  ranks  of  Xew  England  life,  in  her  gen 
eration  !  How  many  are  there  now !  Paying  marvelous  little 
heed  to  the  discussion  of  women's  rights,  they  show  a  wonderful 
addiction  to  the  performance  of  women's  duties. 

His  uncle,  Bishop  Chase  of  Ohio,  assumed,  for  a  time,  the 
care  and  expense  of  his  education,  and  this  drew  him  to  the 
West,  where,  under  this  tutelage,  he  pursued  academic  studies 
for  two  years.  At  the  end  of  this  time  he  returned  to  his 
mother's  charge,  entered  the  junior  class  of  Dartmouth  College, 
and  graduated  in  the  year  1826,  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  The 
only  significance,  in  its  impression  on  his  future  life,  of  this  brief 
guardianship  of  the  Western  Bishop,  was  as  the  determining  in 
fluence  which  fixed  the  chief  city  of  the  "West  in  his  choice  as 
the  forum  and  arena  of  his  professional  and  public  life.  After 
spending  four  years  in  Washington,  gaining  his  subsistence  by 
teaching,  a  law-student  with  Mr.  Wirt — then  at  the  zenith  of  his 
faculties  and  his  fame — studying  men  and  manners  at  the  cap 
ital,  watching  the  new  questions  then  shaping  themselves  for 
political  action,  observing  the  celebrated  statesmen  of  the  day, 
conversant  with  the  great  Chief-Justice  Marshall  and  his  learned 
associates  on  the  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  with  Web 
ster,  and  Binney,  and  other  famous  lawyers  at  its  bar,  he  was 
admitted  to  practice,  and,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  established 
himself  at  Cincinnati,  transferring  thus,  once  and  forever,  his 
home  from  the  Xew  England  of  his  family,  his  birth,  his  educa 
tion,  and  his  love,  to  the  ruder  but  equally  strenuous  and  more 
expansive  society  of  the  West. 

While  yet  of  tender  years,  following  up  the  earlier  pious  in 
struction  of  his  mother,  and  his  own  profound  sense  of  religious 
obligations  under  the  inculcation  of  the  Bishop,  he  accepted  the 
Episcopal  Church  as  the  body  of  Christian  believers  in  whose 
communion  he  found  the  best  support  for  the  religious  life  he 
proposed  to  himself.  When,  he  left  your  college  he  had  not 
wholly  relinquished  a  purpose,  once  held,  of  adopting  the  cleri 
cal  profession.  His  adhesion  to  the  Christian  faith  was  simple 
and  constant  and  sincere,  and  he  accepted  it  as  the  master  and 
rule  of  his  life,  in  devout  confidence  in  the  moral  government  of 
the  world,  as  a  present  and  real  supremacy  over  the  race"  of  man 


8 

and  all  human  affairs.  He  was  all  his  life  a  great  student  QJ.  the 
Scriptures,  and  no  modern  speculations  ever  shook  the  solid  rea 
sons  of  his  belief.  When  he  entered  the  city  of  "Washington, 
fresh  from  college,  "the  earnest  prayer  of  his  heart  was,  that 
God  would  give  him  work  to  do,  and  success  in  doing  it." 
When  he  was  laying  out  the  plans  of  professional  life,  on  his 
first  establishment  at  Cincinnati,  his  invocation  was,  "  May  God 
enable  me  to  be  content  with  the  consciousness  of  faithfully  dis 
charging  all  my  duties,  and  deliver  me  from  a  too  eager  thirst 
for  the  applause  and  favor  of  men."  All  through  the  successive 
and  manifold  activities  of  his  busy  and  strenuous  life,  when,  to 
outward  seeming,  they  were  all  worldly  and  personal,  the  same 
predominant  sense  of  duty  and  religious  responsibility  animated 
and  solemnized  the  whole. 

At  this  point  in  his  life  we  may  draw  the  line  between  the 
period  of  education  for  the  work  he  had  before  him  and  that 
work  itself.  What  Mr.  Chase  was,  at  this  time,  in  all  the  essen 
tial  traits  of  his  moral  and  intellectual  character — in  his  views  of 
life,  its  value,  its  just  objects  and  aims,  its  social,  moral,  and  re 
ligious  responsibilities;  in  his  views  of  himself,  his  duties,  obli 
gations,  prospects,  and  possibilities;  in  his  determinations  and 
desires — such,  it  seems  to  me  from  the  most  attentive  study  of 
all  these  points — such,  in  a  very  marked  degree,  he  continued  to 
be  at  every  stage  of  his  ascent  in  life. 

What,  then,  shall  we  assign  as  the  decisive  elements,  the  con 
trolling  constituents,  of  character— and  what  the  assurance  of 
their  persistence  and  their  force — which  this  youth  could  bring 
to  the  service  of  the  State,  or  contribute  to  the  advancement  of 
society  and  the  well-being  of  mankind  ? 

These  were  simple,  but,  in  combination,  powerful,  arid  ade 
quate  to  fill  out  worthily  the  life  of  large  opportunities  which, 
though  not  yet  foreseen  to  himself,  was  awaiting  him. 

The  faculty  of  reason  was  very  broad  and  strong  in  him,  yet 
without  being  vast  or  surprising.  It  seized  the  sensible  and 
practical  relations  of  all  subjects  submitted  to  it,  and  firmly  held 
them  in  its  tenacious  grasp ;  it  exposed  these  relations  to  the  ap 
prehension  of  those  whose  opinion  or  action  it  behooved  him  to 
influence,  by  methods  direct  and  sincere,  discarding  mere  inge 
nuity,  and  disdaining  the  subtleness  of  insinuation.  His  educa- 


tion  had  all  been  of  a  kind  to  discipline  and  invigorate  his  nat 
ural  powers ;  not  to  encumber  them  with  a  besetting  weight  of 
learning,  or  to  supplant  them  by  artificial  training. 

His  oratory  was  vigorous,  with  those  "  qualities  of  clearness, 
force,  and  earnestness,  which  produce  conviction."  His  rhetoric 
was  ample,  but  not  rich ;  his  illustrations  apposite,  but  seldom 
to  the  point  of  wit ;  his  delivery  weighty  and  imposing. 

His  force  of  will,  whether  in  respect  of  peremptoriness  or 
persistency,  was  prodigious.  His  courage  to  brave,  and  his 
fortitude-  to  endure,  were  absolute.  His  loyalty  to  every  cause 
in  which  he  enlisted — his  fidelity  in  every  warfare  in  which  he 
took  up  arms — were  proof  against  peril  and  disaster. 

His  estimate  of  human  affairs,  and  of  his  own  relation  to 
them,  was  sober  and  sedate.  All  their  grandeur  and  splendor, 
to  his  apprehension,  connected  themselves  with  the.  immortal 
life,  and  with  God,  as  their  guide,  overseer,  and  ruler ;  and  the 
sum  of  the  practical  wisdom  of  all  worthy  personal  purposes 
seemed  to  him  to  be,  to  discern  the  path  of  duty,  and  to  pur 
sue  it. 

His  views  of  the  commonwealth  were  essentially  Puritan. 
Equality  of  right,  community  of  interest,  reciprocity  of  duty, 
were  the  adequate,  and  the  only  adequate,  principles  with  him 
to  maintain  the  strength  and  virtue  of  society,  and  preserve  the 
power  and  permanence  of  the  State.  With  these  principles  un 
impaired  and  unimpeded  he  feared  nothing  for  his  countrymen 
or  their  government,  and  he  made  constant  warfare  upon  every 
assault  or  menace  that  endangered  them. 

It  was  with  these  endowments  and  with  this  preparation  of 
spirit,  that  Mr.  Chase  confronted  the  realities  of  life,  and  as 
sumed  to  play  a  part  which,  whether  humble  or  high  in  the  scale 
and  plane  of  circumstance,  was  sure  to  be  elevated  and  worthy 
in  itself ;  for  the  loftiness  of  his  spirit  for  the  conflict  of  life  was 

"Such  cis  raised 

To  height  of  noblest  temper  heroes  old 
Arming  to  hattle." 

Such  a  character  necessarily  confers  authority  among  men, 
and  that  Mr.  Chase  was  ready,  on  all  occasions  arising,  to  assert 
his  high  principles  by  comporting  action  was  never  left  in  doubt. 


10 

Whether  by  interposing  nis  strong  arm  to  save  Mr.  Birney  from 
the  fury  of  a  mob  of  Cincinnati  gentlemen,  incensed  at  the  free 
dom  of  his  press  in  its  defiance  of  slavery ;  or  by  his  bold  and 
constant  maintenance  in  the  courts  of  the  cause  of  fugitive 
slaves  in  the  face  of  the  resentments  of  the  public  opinion  of 
the  day ;  or  by  his  fearless  desertion  of  all  reigning  politics  to 
lead  a  feeble  band  of  protestants  through  the  wilderness  of  anti- 
slavery  wanderings,  its  pillar  of  cloud  by  day,  its  pillar  of  fire 
by  night;  or  as  Governor  of  Ohio  facing  the  intimidations  of 
the  slave  States,  backed  by  Federal  power  and  a  storm  of 
popular  passion ;  or  in  consolidating  the  triumphant  politics  on 
the  urgent  issue  which  was  to  flame  out  into  rebellion  and  re 
volt  ;  or  in  his  serene  predominance,  during  the  trial  of  the 
President,  over  the  rage  of  party  hate  which  brought  into  peril 
the  coordination  of  the  great  departments  of  Government,  and 
threatened  its  whole  frame — in  all  these  marked  instances  of 
public  duty,  as  in  the  simple  routine  of  his  ordinary  conduct, 
Mr.  Chase  asked  but  one  question  to  determine  his  course  of 
action,  "  Is  it  right  ? "  If  it  were,  he  had  strength,  and  will, 
and  courage  to  carry  him  through  with  it. 

In  the  ten  years  of  professional  life  which  followed  his  ad 
mission  to  the  &ar,  Mr.  Chase  established  a  repute  for  ability, 
integrity,  elevation  of  purpose  and  capacity  for  labor,  which 
would  have  surely  brought  him  the  highest  rewards  of  forensic 
prosperity  and  distinction,  and  in  due  course,  of  eminent  judicial 
station.  In  this  quieter  part  of  his  life,  as  in  his  public  career,  it 
is  noticeable  that  his  employments  were  never  common-place,  but 
savored  of  a  public  zest  and  interest.  His  compilation  of  the 
Ohio  Statutes  was  a  magnum  opus?  indeed,  for  the  leisure  hours 
of  a  young  lawyer,  and  possesses  a  permanent  value,  justifying 
the  assurance  Chancellor  Kent  gave  him,  that  this  surprising 
labor  would  find  its  "  reward  in  the  good  he  had  done,  in  the 
talents  he  had  shown,  and  in  the  gratitude  of  his  profession." 

But  this  quiet  was  soon  broken,  never  to  be  resumed,  and 
though  the  great  office  of  Chief -Justice  was  in  store  for  him,  it 
was  to  be  reached  by  the  path  of  statesmanship  and  not  of 
jurisprudence. 

If  it  had  seemed  ever  to  Mr.  Chase  and  his  youthful  con 
temporaries,  that  they  had  come  upon  times  when,  as  Sir  Thomas 


11 

Browne  thought  two  hundred  years  'ago,  "  it  is  too  late  to  be 
ambitious,"  and  "  the  great  mutations  of  the  world  are  acted," 
the  illusion  was  soon  dispelled.  It'has  been  sadly  said  of  Greece 
in  the  age  of  Plutarch,  that  "  all  her  grand  but  turbulent  activi 
ties,  all  her  noble  agitations  spent,  she  was  only  haunted  by  the 
spectres  of  her  ancient  renown."  2s"o  doubt,  forty  years  ago, 
in  this  country,  there  was  a  prevalent  feeling  that  the  age  of 
the  early  settlements  and,  again,  of  our  War  of  Independence, 
had  closed  the  heroic  chapters  of  our  history,  and  left  nothing 
for  the  public  life  of  our  later  times,  but  peaceful  and  progressive 
development,  and  the  cairn  virtues  of  civil  prudence,  to  work 
out  of  our  system  all  incongruities  and  discords.  But  what 
these  political  speculations  assigned  as  the  passionless  work  of 
successive  generations,  was  to  be  done  in  our  time,  and,  as  it 
were,  in  one  "  unruly  right." 

Mr.  Chase  had  supported  General  Harrison  for  the  presi 
dency  in  1840,  not  upon  any  very  thorough  identification  with 
Whig  politics,  but  partly  from  a  natural  tendency  toward  the 
personal  fortunes  of  a  candidate  from  the  West,  and  from  his 
own  State,  in  the  absence  of  any  strong  attraction  of  principle 
to  draw  him  to  the  candidate  or  the  politics  of  the  Democratic 
party.  But,  upon  the  death  of  Harrison  and  .the  elevation  of 
Tyler  to  the  presidency,  Mr.  Chase,  promptly  discerning  the 
signs  of  the  times,  took  the  initiative  toward  making  the  national 
attitude  and  tendency  on  the  subject  of  slavery  the  touchstone 
of  politics.  Politic  and  prudent  by  nature,  and.  with  no  per 
sonal  disappointments  or  grievances  to  bias  his  course,  he  doubt 
less  would  have  preferred  to  save  and  use  the  accumulated  and 
organized  force  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  political  parties  which 
divided  the  country,  and  press  its  power  into  the  service  of  the 
principles  and  the  political  action  which  he  had,  undoubtingly, 
decided  the  honor  and  interests  of  the  country  demanded.  He 
was  among  the  first  of  the  competent  and  practical  political 
thinkers  of  the  day,  to  penetrate  the  superficial  crust  which 
covered  the  slumbering  fires  of  our.  politics,  and  to  plan  for  the 
guidance  of  their  irrepressible  heats  so  as  to  save  the  constituted 
liberties  of  the  nation,  if  not  from  convulsion,  at  least  from  con 
flagration.  He  found  the  range  of  political  thought  and  action, 
which  either  party  permitted  to  itself  or  to  its  rival,  compressed 


12 

by  two  unyielding  postulates.  The  first  of  these  insisted,  that 
the  safety  of  the  republic  would  tolerate  no  division  of  parties, 
in  Federal  politics,  which  did  not  run  through  the  slave  States 
as  well  as  the  free.  The  second  was  that  no  party  could  main 
tain  a  footing  in  the  slave  States,  that  did  not  concede  the 
nationality  of  the  institution  of  slavery  and  its  right,  in  equality 
with  all"  the  institutions  of  freedom,  to  grow  with  the  growth 
and  strengthen  with  the  strength  of  the  American  Union. 
Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  to  a  student  of  politics  than 
the  masterly  efforts  of  patriotism  and  statesmanship,  in  which 
all  the  great  men  of  the  country  participated,  for  many  years, 
to  confine  the  perturbations  of  our  public  life  to  a  controversy 
with  this  latter  and  lesser  postulate.  Seward  with  the  Whig 
party,  Chase  with  the  Democratic  party,  and  a  host  of  others  in 
both,  tried  hard  to  conciliate  the  irreconcilable,  and  to  stultify 
astuteness,  to  the  acceptance  of  the  proposition  that  slavery,  its 
growth  girdled,  would  not  be  already  struck  with  death.  Quite 
early,  however,  Mr.  Chase  grappled  with  the  primary  postulate, 
and  through  great  labors,  wise  counsels,  long-suffering  patience, 
and  by  the  successive  stages  of  the  Liberty  party,  Independent 
Democracy,  and  Free-Soil  party,  led  up  the  way  to  the  Repub 
lican  party,  which,  made  up  by  the  Whig  party  dropping  its 
slave  State  constituency,  and  the  Democratic  party  losing  its 
Free-Soil  constituents,  rent  this  primary  postulate  of  our  poli 
tics  in  twain,  and  took  possession  of  the  Government  by  the 
election  of  its  candidate,  Mr.  Lincoln. 

This  movement  in  politics  was  one  of  prodigious  difficulty 
and  immeasurable  responsibility.  It  was  so  felt  to  be  by  the 
prime  actors  in  it,  though  with  greatly  varying  largeness  of  survey 
and  depth  of  insight.  In  the  system  of  American  politics  it 
created  as  vast  a  disturbance  as  would  a  mutation  of  the  earth's 
axis,  or  the  displacement  of  the  solar  gravitation,  in  our  natural 
world.  This  great  transaction  filled  the  twenty  years  of  Mr. 
Chase's  mature  manhood,  say,  from  the  age  of  thirty  to  that  of 
fifty  years.  He  must  be  awarded  the  full  credit  of  having 
understood,  resolved  upon,  planned,  organized,  and  executed, 
this  political  movement,  and  whether  himself  leading  or  coop 
erating  or  following  in  the  array  and  march  of  events,  his  plan, 
his  part,  his  service,  were  all  for  the  cause,  its  prosperity,  and  its 


13 

success.  To  one  who  considers  this  career,  not  as  completed  and 
triumphant,  not  with  the  glories  of  power,  and  dignities,  and 
fame  which  attended  it,  not  with  the  blessings  of  a  liberated  race, 
a  consolidated  Union,  an  ennobled  nationality  which  receive  the 
plaudits  of  his  countrymen,  but  as  its  hazards  and  renunciations, 
its  toils  and  its  perils,  showed  at  the  outset,  in  contrast  with  the 
ease  and  splendor  of  his  personal  fortunes  which  adhesion  to  the 
political  power  of  slavery  seemed  to  insure  to  him,  and  then  con 
templates  the  promptness  of  his  choice  and  the  steadfastness  of 
his  perseverance,  the  impulse  and  the  action  seem  to  find  a  paral 
lel  in  the  life  of  the  great  Hebrew  statesman,  who,  "  5y  faith, 
when  he  was  come  to  years,  refused  to  be  called  the  son  of  Pha 
raoh's  daughter,"  and  "  ly  faith,  forsook  Egypt,  not  fearing  the 
wrath  of  the  king." 

The  first  half  of  this  period  of  twenty  years  witnessed  only 
the  preliminaries,  equally  brave  and  sagacious,  of  agitation,  pro 
mulgation  of  purposes  and  opinions,  consultations,  conventions, 
and  political  organizations,  more  and  more  comprehensive  and 
effective.  All  this  time  Mr.  Chase  was  simply  a  citizen,  and 
apparently  could  expect  no  political  station  or  authority  till  it 
should  come  from  the  prosperous  fortunes  of  the  party  he  was 
striving  to  create.  Suddenly,  by  a  surprising  conjunction  of 
circumstances  he  was  lifted,  at  one  bound,  to  the  highest  and 
widest  sphere  of  influence,  upon  the  opinion  of  the  country, 
which  our  political  establishment  presents — I  mean  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States.  The  elective  body,  the  Legislature  of 
Ohio,  was  filled  in  almost  equal  numbers  with  Whigs  and  Dem 
ocrats,  but  a  handful  of  Liberty  party  men  held  the  control  to 
prevent  or  determine  a  majority.  They  elected  Mr.  Chase. 
The  concurrence  is  similar,  in  its  main  features,  to  the  election 
of  Mr.  Sumner  to  the  Senate,  two  years  afterward,  in  Massachu 
setts.  Much  criticism  of  such  results  is  always  and  necessarily 
excited.  The  true  interpretation  of  such  transactions  is  simply  a 
transition  state  from  old  to  new  politics,  wherein  party  names 
and  present  interests  are  unchanged,  but  opinions  and  projects  and 
prospects  are  taking  a  new  shape,  and  the  old  mint,  all  at  once, 
astonishes  everybody  by  striking  a  new  image  and  superscription, 
soon  to  be  stamped  upon  the  whole  coinage.  The  part  of  Mr. 
Chase  in  this  election,  as  of  Mr.  Sumner  in  his  own,  was  elevated 


14 

and  without  guile.  His  term  in  the  Senate  brought  him  to  the 
year  1856,  and  was  followed  by  two  successive  elections  and  four 
years'  service  as  Governor  of  Ohio,  and  a  reelection  to  the  Sen 
ate.  In  these  high  stations  he  added  public  authority  to  his 
opinions  and  purposes,  and  gained  for  them  wider  and  wider  in 
fluence,  while  he  discharged  all  general  senatorial  duties,  and 
official  functions  as  Governor,  with  benefit  to  the  legislation  of 
the  nation  and  to  the  administration  of  the  State. 

As  the  presidential  election  approached  and  the  Republican 
party  took  the  field  with  an  assurance  of  assuming  the  admin 
istration  of  the  Federal  Government,  and  of  meeting  the  weighty 
responsibility  of  the  new  political  basis,  the  question  of  candi 
dates  absorbed  the  attention  of  the  party,  and  attracted  the  inter 
est  of  the  whole  country.  When  a  new  dynasty  is  to  be  en 
throned,  the  personality  of  the  ruler  is  an  element  of  the  first 
importance.  In  the  general  judgment  of  the  country,  and 
equally  to  the  apprehension  of  the  mass  of  his  own  party  and  of 
its  rival,  Mr.  Seward  stood  as  the  natural  candidate,  and  upon 
manifold  considerations.  His  unquestioned  abilities,  his  un 
doubted  fidelity,  his  vast  services  and  wide  following  in  the  party, 
presented  an  unprecedented  combination  of  political  strength  to 
obtain  the  nomination  and  carry  the  election,  and  of  adequate 
faculties  and  authority  with,  the  people  for  the  prosperous  ad 
ministration  of  the  presidential  office.  Second  only  to  Mr. 
Seward,  in  this  general  judgment  of  his  countrymen,  stood  Mr. 
Chase,  with  just  enough  of  preference  for  him,  in  some  quarters, 
over  Mr.  Seward,  upon  limited  and  special  considerations,  to  en 
courage  that  darling  expedient  of  our  politics  a  resort  to  a  third 
candidate.  This  recourse  was  had,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  was  nomi 
nated  and  elected. 

The  disclosure  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen 
as  a  possible,  probable,  actual  candidate  for  the  presidency  came 
upon  them  with  the  suddenness  and  surprise  of  a  revelation. 
His  advent  to  power  as  the  ruler  of  a  great  people,  in  the  su 
preme  juncture  of  their  affairs,  to  be  the  head  of  the  state 
among  its  tried  and  trusted  statesmen,  to  subordinate  and  co 
ordinate  the  pride  and  ambition  of  leaders,  the  passions  and  in 
terests  of  the  masses,  and  to  guide  the  destinies  of  a  nation 
whose  institutions  were  all  framed  for  obedience  to  law  and  per- 


15 

petual  domestic  peace,  through  rebellion,  revolt,  and  civil  war; 
and  to  the  subversion  oi  the  very  order  of  society  of  a  vast  ter 
ritory  and  a  vast  population,  finds  no  parallel  in  history ;  and 
was  a  puzzle  to  all  the  astrologers  and  soothsayers.  It  has  been 
said  of  George  III. — whose  narrow  intellect  and  obstinate  tem 
per  so  greatly  helped  on  the  rebellion  of  our  ancestors  to  our 
independence — it  has  been  said  of  George  III.,  that  "  it  was  his 
misfortune  that,  intended  by  nature  to  be  a  farmer,  accident 
placed  him  on  a  throne."  It  was  the  happy  fortune  of  the 
American  people,  that  to  the  manifest  advantages  of  freedom 
from  jealousies  of  any  rivals ;  and  from  commitment,  by  any 
record,  to  schemes  or  theories  or  sects  or  cabals,  pursued  by  no 
hatreds,  beguiled  by  no  attachments,  .Mr.  Lincoln  added  a  vigor 
ous,  penetrating,  and  capacious  intellect,  and  a  noble,  generous 
nature  which  filled  his  conduct  of  the  Government,  in  small 
things  and  great,  from  beginning  to  end,  "  with  malice  to  none 
and  charity  to  all."  These  qualities  were  indispensable  to  the 
safety  of  the  Government  and  to  the  prosperous  issue  of  our 
civil  war.  In  the  great  crisis  of  a  nation  struggling  with  rebel 
lion,  the  presence  or  absence  of  these  personal  traits  in  a  ruler 
may  make  the  turning-point  in  the  balance  of  its  fate.  Had 
Lincoln,  in  dealing  with  the  administration  of  government  dur 
ing  the  late  rebellion,  insisted  as  George  III.  did,  in  his  treat 
ment  of  the  American  Revolution,  upon  "  the  right  of  employing 
as  responsible  advisers  those  only  whom  he  personally  liked,  and 
who  were  ready  to  consult  and  execute  his  personal  wishes," 
had  he  excluded  from  his  counsels  great  statesmen  like  Seward 
and  Chase,  as  King  George  did  Fox  and  Burke,  who  can  meas 
ure  the  dishonor,  disorder,  and  disaster  into  which  our  affairs 
might  have  fallen  ?  Such  narrow  intelligence  and  perversity  are 
as  little  consistent  with  the  true  working  of  administration  un 
der  our  Constitution  as  they  were  under  the  British  Constitution, 
and  as  little  consonant  with  the  sound  sense  as  they  are  with 
the  generous  spirit  of  our  people. 

By  the  arrangement  of  his  Cabinet,  and  his  principal  appoint 
ments  for  critical  services,  Mr.  Lincoln  showed  at  once  that  na 
ture  had  fitted  him  for  a  ruler,  and  accident  only  had  hid  his  ear 
lier  life  in  obscurity.  I  cannot  hesitate  to  think  that  the  pres 
ence  of  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Chase  in  the  great  offices  of  State 


16 

and  Treasury,  and  their  faithful  concurrence  in  the  public  service 
and  the  public  repute  of  the  President's  conduct  of  the  Govern 
ment,  gave  to  the  people  all  the  benefits  which  might  have  justly 
been  expected  from  the  election  of  either  to  be  himself  the  head 
of  the  Government  and  much  else  besides.  I  know  of  no  war 
rant  in  the  qualities  of  human  nature,  to  have  hoped  that  either 
of  these  great  political  leaders  would  have  made  as  good  a 
minister  under  the  administration  of  the  other,  as  President,  as 
both  of  them  did  under  the  administration  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  I 
see  nothing  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  great  qualities  and  great  authority 
with  this  people,  which  could  have  commensurately  served  our 
need  in  any  place,  in  the  conduct  of  affairs,  except  at  their  head. 

The  general  importance,  under  a  form  of  government  where 
the  confidence  of  the  people  is  the  breath  of  the  life  of  execu 
tive  authority,  of  filling  the  great  offices  of  state  with  men  who, 
besides  possessing  the  requisite  special  faculties  for  their  several 
departments  and  large  general  powers  of  mind  for  politics  and 
policies,  have  also  great  repute  with  the  party,  and  great  credit 
with  the  country,  was  well  understood  by  the  President.  He 
knew  that  the  times  needed,  in  the  high  places  of  government, 
men  "  who,"  in  Bolingbroke's  phrase,  "  had  built  about  them 
the  opinion  of  mankind  which,  fame  after  death,  is  superior 
strength  and  power  in  life." 

Of  the  great  abilities  which  Mr.  Chase,  in  his  administration 
of  the  Treasury,  exhibited  through  the  three  arduous  years  of 
that  public  service,  no  question  has  ever  been  made.  The  ex 
actions  of  the  place  knew  no  limits.  A  people,  wholly  unaccus 
tomed  to  the  pressure  of  taxation,  and  with  an  absolute  horror 
of  a  national  debt,  was  to  be  rapidly  subjected  to  the  first  with 
out  stint,  and  to  be  buried  under  a  mountain  of  the  last.  Taxes 
which  should  support  military  operations  on  the  largest  scale, 
and  yet  not  break  the  back  of  industry  which  alone  could  pay 
them  ;  loans,  in  every  form  that  financial  skill  could  devise,  and 
to  the  farthest  verge  of  the  public  credit ;  and,  finally,  the  ex 
treme  resort  of  governments  under  the  last  stress  and  necessity, 
of  the  subversion  of  the  legal  tender,  by  the  substitution  of  what 
has  been  aptly  and  accurately  called  the  "  coined  credit  "  of  the 
Government  for  its  coined  money — all  these  exigencies  and  all 
these  expedients  made  up  the  daily  problems  of  the  Secretary's 


17 

life.  "We  may  have  some  conception  of  the  magnitude  of  these 
financial  operations,  by  considering  one  of  the  subordinate  con 
trivances  required  to  give  to  the  currency  of  the  country 'the 
enormous  volume  and  the  ready  circulation  without  which  the 
tides  of  revenue  and  expenditure  could  not  have  maintained 
their  flow.  I  refer  to  the  transfer  of  the  paper  money  of  the 
country  from  the  State  to  the  national  banks.  This  transac 
tion,  financially  and  politically,  transcends  in  magnitude  and 
difficulty,  of  itself  alone,  any  single  measure  of  administrative 
government  found  in  our  history,  yet  the  conception,  the  plan, 
and  the  execution,  under  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Chase,  took  less 
time  and  raised  less  disturbance  than  it  is  the  custom  of  our 
politics  to  accord  to  a  change  in  our  tariff  or  a  modification  of  a 
commercial  treaty.  Another  special  instance  of  difficult  and 
complicated  administration  was  that  of  the  renewal  of  the  inter 
course  of  trade,  to  follow  closely  the  success  of  our  arms,  and 
subdue  the  interests  of  the  recovered  region  to  the  requirements 
of  the  Government.  But  I  cannot  insist  on  details,  where  all 
was  vast  and  surprising  and  prosperous.  I  hazard  nothing  in 
saying  that  the  management  of  the  finances  of  the  civil  war  was 
the  marvel  of  Europe  and  the  admiration  of  our  own  people. 
For  a  great  part  of  the  wisdom,  the  courage,  and  the  overwhelm 
ing  force  of  will  which  carried  us  through  the  stress  of  this 
stormy  sea,  the  country  stands  under  deep  obligations  to  Mr. 
Chase  as  its  pilot  through  its  fiscal  perils  and  perplexities. 
"Whether  the  genius  of  Hamilton,  dealing  with  great  difficulties 
and  with  small  resources,  transcended  that  of  Chase,  meeting 
the  largest  exigencies  with  great  resources,  is  an  unprofitable 
speculation.  They  stand  together,  in  the  judgment  of  their 
countrymen,  the  great  financiers  of  our  history. 

A  somewhat  persistent  discrepancy  of  feeling  and  opinion 
between  the  President  and  the  Secretary,  in  regard  to  an  im 
portant  office  in  the  public  service,  induced  Mr.  Chase  to  resign 
his  portfolio,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  to  acquiesce  in  his  desire.  !N~o 
doubt,  it  is  not  wholly  fortunate  in  our  Government  that  the 
distribution  of  patronage,  a  mixed  question  of  party  organiza 
tion  and  public  service,  should  so  often  harass  and  embarrass 
administration,  even  in  difficult  and  dangerous  times.  Mr. 
Lincoln's  ludicrous  simile  is  an  incomparable  description  of  the 


18 

system  as  lie  found  it.  He  said,  at  the  outset  of  his  administra 
tion,  that  "  he  was  like  a  man  letting  rooms  at  one  end  of  his 
house,  while  the  other  end  was  on  fire."  Some  criticism  of  the 
Secretary's  resignation  and  of  the  occasion  of  it,  at  the  time, 
sought  to  impute  to  them  consequences  of  personal  acerbity  be 
tween  these  eminent  men,  and  the  mischiefs  of  competing  am 
bitions  and  discordant  counsels  for  the  public  interests.  But 
the  appointment  of  Mr.  Chase  to  the  chief-justiceship  of  the 
United  States  silenced  all  this  evil  speech  and  evil  surmise. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Chase  greatly  desired  this  office, 
its  dignity  and  durability  both  considered,  the  greatest  gratifica 
tion,  to  personal  desires,  and  the  worthiest  in  public  service,  and 
in  public  esteem,  that  our  political  establishment  affords.  For 
tunate,  indeed,  is  he  who,  in  the  estimate  of  the  profession  of 
the  law,  and  in  the  general  judgment  of  his  countrymen,  com 
bines  the  great  natural  powers,  the  disciplined  faculties,  the 
large  learning,  the  larger  wisdom,  the  firm  temper,  the  amiable 
serenity,  the  stainless  purity,  the  sagacious  statesmanship,  the 
penetrating  insight,  which  make  up  the  qualities  that  should 
preside  at  this  high  altar  of  justice,  and  dispense  to  this  great 
people  the  final  decrees  of  a  government  "  not  of  men,  but  of 
laws."  To  whatever  President  it.  comes,  as  a  function  of  his 
supreme  authority,  to  assign  this  great  duty  to  the  worthiest, 
there  is  given  an  opportunity  of  immeasurable  honor  for  his  own 
name,  and  of  vast  benefits  to  his  countrymen,  outlasting  his  own 
brief  authority,  and  perpetuating  its  remembrance  in  the  per 
manent  records  of  justice,  "the  main  interest  of  all  human 
society,"  so  long  as  it  holds  sway  among  men.  John  Adams, 
from  the  Declaration  of  Independence  down,  and  with  the 
singular  felicity  of  his  line  of  personal  descendants,  has  many 
titles  to  renown,  but  by  no  act  of  his  life  has  he  done  more  to 
maintain  the  constituted  liberties  which  he  joined  in -declaring, 
or  to  confirm  his  own  fame,  than  by  giving  to  the  United  States 
the  great  Chief -Justice  Marshall,  to  be  to  us,  forever,  through 
every  storm  that  shall  beset  our  ship  of  state — 

"Like  a  great  sea-mark,  standing  every  flaw, 
And  saving  them  that  eye  it." 

In  this  disposition,  Mr.  Lincoln  appointed  Mr.  Chase  to  the 


19 

vacant  seat,  and  the  general  voice  recognized  the  great  fitness 
of  the  selection. 

I  may  be  permitted  to  borrow  from  the  well-considered  and 
sober  words  of  an  eminent  judge,  the  senior  Associate  on  the 
bench  of  the  Supreme  Court — words  that  will  carry  weight 
with  the  country  which  mine  could  not — a  judicial  estimate  of 
this  selection.  Mr.  Justice  Clifford  says:  "Appointed,  as  it 
were,  by  common  consent,  he  seated  himself  easily  and  naturally 
in  the  chair  of  justice,  and  gracefully  answered  every  demand 
upon  the  station,  whether  it  had  respect  to  the  dignity  of  the 
office,  or  to  the  elevation  of  the  individual  character  of  the  in 
cumbent,  or  to  his  firmness,  purity,  or  vigor  of  mind.  From 
the  first  moment  he  drew  the  judicial  robes  around  him  he 
viewed  all  questions  submitted  to  him  as  a  judge  in  the  calm 
atmosphere  of  the  bench,  and  with  the  deliberate  consideration 
of  one  who  feels  that  he  is  determining  issues  for  the  remote 
and  unknown  future  of  a  great  people." 

Magistratus  ostendit  virum — the  magistracy  shows  out  the 
man.  A  great  office,  by  its  great  requirements  and  great  oppor 
tunities,  calls  out  and  displays  the  great  powers  and  rare  quali 
ties  which,  presumably,  have  raised  the  man  to  the  place.  Let 
us  consider  this  last  public  service  and  last  great  station,  as  they 
exhibit  Mr.  Chase  to  a  candid  estimate. 

And,  first,  I  notice  the  conspicuous  fitness  for  judicial  service 
of  the  mental  and  moral  constitution  of  the  man.  All  through 
the  heady  contests  of  the  vehement  politics  of  his  times,  his 
share  in  them  had  embodied  decision,  moderation,  serenity,  and 
inflexible  submission  to  reason  as  the  master  and  ruler  of  all 
controversies.  Force,  fraud,  cunning,  and  all  lubric  arts  and 
artifices,  even  the  beguilements  of  rhetoric,  found  no  favor  with 
him,  as  modes  of  warfare  or  means  of  victory.  So  far,  then, 
from  needing  to  lay  down  any  weapons,  or  disuse  any  methods 
in  which  he  was  practised,  or  learn  or  assume  new  habits  of 
mind  or  strange  modes  of  reasoning,  Mr.  Chase,  in  the  working 
of  his  intellect  and  the  frame  of  his  spirit,  was  always  judicial. 

It  was  not  less  fortunate  for  the  prompt  authority  of  his 
new  station,  so  dependent  upon  the  opinion  of  the  country,  that 
his  credit  for  great  abilities  and  capacity  for  large  responsi 
bilities  was  already  established.  Great  repute,  as  well  as  essen- 


20 

tial  character,  is  justly  demanded  for  all  elevated  public  stations, 
and  especially  for  judicial  office,  whose  prosperous  service,  in 
capital  junctures,  turns  mainly  on  moral  power  with  the  com 
munity  at  large.  .  .  , 

Both  these  preparations  easily  furnished  the  Chief-Justice 
with  the  requisite  aptitude  for  the  three  relations,  of  prime  im 
portance,  upon  wiiich  his  adequacy  must  finally  be  tested ;  I 
mean,  his  relation  to  the  court  as  its  presiding  head,  his  relation 
to  the  profession  as  masters  of  the  reason  and  debate  over  which 
the  court  is  the  arbiter,  and  his  relation  to  the  people  and  the 
State  in  the  exercise  of  the  critical  constitutional  duties  of  the 
court,  as  a  coordinate  department  of  the  Government. 

In  a  numerous  court,  that  the  Chief-Justice  should  have  a 
prevalent  and  gracious  authority,  as  first  among  equals,  to  adjust, 
arrange,  and  facilitate  the  cooperative  working  of  its  members, 
will  not  be  doubted.  For  more  than  sixty  years,  at  least,  this 
court  had  felt  this  authority— £><9tos  et  lenis  dominatio — in  the 
presence  of  the  two  celebrated  Chief -Justices  who  filled  out  this 
long  service.  Their  great  experience  and  great  age  had  sup 
ported,  and  general  conformity  of  political  feeling,  if  not  opin 
ion,  on  the  bench,  had  assisted,  this  relation  of  the  Chief-Justice 
to  the  court. 

When  Mr.  Chase  was  called  to  this  station,  he  found  the 
bench  filled  with  men  of  mark  and  credit,  and  his  accession  made 
an  exactly  equal  division  of  the  court  between  the  creations  of 
the  old  and  of  the  new  politics.  In  these  circumstances  the  prop 
er  maintenance  of  the  traditional  relation  of  the  Chief^Justice 
to  the  court  was  of  much  importance  to  its  unbroken  authority 
with  the  public.  That  it  was  so  maintained  wras  apparent  to  ob 
servation,  and  Mr.  Justice  Clifford,  speaking  for  the  court,  has 
shown  it  in  a  most  amiable  light : 

"  Throughout  his  judicial  career  he  always  maintained  that 
dignity  of  carriage  and  that  calm,  noble,  and  unostentatious  pres 
ence  that  uniformly  characterized  his  manners  and  deportment 
in  the  social  circle;  and,  in  his  intercourse  with  his  brethren,  his 
suggestions  were  always  couched  in  friendly  terms,  and  were 
never  marred  by  severity  or  harshness." 

As  for  the  judgment  of  the  bar  of  the  country,  while  it  gave 
its  full  assent  to  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Chase,  as  an  elevated 


21 

and  wise  selection  by  the  President,  upon  the  general  and  public 
grounds  which  should  always  control,  there  was  some  hesitancy, 
on  the  part  of  the  lawyers,  as  to  the  completeness  of  Mr.  Chase's 
professional  training,  and  the  special  aptitude  of  his  intellect  to 
thread  the  tangled  mazes  of  affairs  which  form  the  body  of  pri 
vate  litigations.  The  doubt  was  neither  unkind  nor  unnatural, 
and  it  was  readily  and  gladly  resolved  under  the  patient  and 
laborious  application,  and  the  accurate  and  discriminating  in 
vestigation,  with  which  the  Chief -Justice  handled  the  diversified 
subjects,  and  the  manifold  complexities,  which  were  brought  into 
judgment  before  him.  In  fact,  the  original  dubitation  had  over 
looked  the  earlier  distinction  of  Mr.  Chase  at  the  bar  in  some 
most  important  forensic  efforts,  and  had  erred  in  comparing,  for 
their  estimate,  Mr.  Chase  entering  upon  judicial  employments, 
with  his  celebrated  predecessors,  as  they  showed  themselves  at 
the  close,  not  at  the  outset,  of  their  long  judicial  service.  I  feel 
no  fear  of  dissent  from  the  profession  in  saying  that  those  who 
practised  in  the  Circuit  or  in  the  Supreme  Court  while  he  pre 
sided,  as  well  as  the  larger  and  widely-diffused  body  of  lawyers 
who  give  competent  and  responsible  study  to  the  reports,  recog 
nize  the  force  of  his  reason,  the  clearness  of  his  perceptions,  the 
candor  of  his  opinions,  and  the  lucid  rhetoric  of  his  judgments, 
as  assuring  his  rank  with  the  eminent  judges  of  our  own  and  the 
mother-country. 

But,  in  the  most  imposing  part  of  the  jurisdiction  and  juris 
prudence  of  the  court ;  in  its  dominion  over  all  that  belongs  to 
the  law  of  nations,  whether  occupied  with,  the  weighty  questions 
of  peace  and  war,  and  the  multitudinous  disturbances  of  public 
and  private  law  which  follow  the  change  from  one  to  the  other ; 
or  with  the  complications  of  foreign  intercourse  and  commerce 
with  all  the  world,  which  the  genius  of  our  people  is  constantly 
expanding ;  in  its  control,  also,  of  the  lesser  public  law  of  our 
political  system,  by  which  we  are  a  nation  of  republics,  where 
the  bounds  of  State  and  Federal  authority  need  constant  explo 
ration,  and  require  accurate  and  circumspect  adjustment ;  in  its 
final  arbitrament  on  all  conflicts  and  encroachments  by  which  the 
great  coordinate  departments  of  the  Government  are  to  be  con 
fined  to  their  appropriate  spheres ;  in  that  delicate  and  superb 
supremacy  of  judicial  reason  whereby  the  .Constitution  confides 


22 

to  the  deliberations  of  this  court  the  determination,  even,  of  the 
legality  of  legislation,  and  trusts  it,  nevertheless,  to  abstain  it 
self  from  law-making — in  all  these  transcendent  functions  of  the 
tribunal  the  preparation  and  the  adequacy  of  the  Chief -Justice 
were  unquestioned. 

Accordingly,  we  find  in  the  few  years  of  his  service,  before 
his  decline  in  health,  in  the  crowd  of  causes  bred  by  the  civil 
war,  which  pressed  the  court  with  novel  embarrassments,  and 
loaded  it  with  unprecedented  labors,  that  the  Chief- Justice  gave 
conspicuous  evidence,  in  repeated  instances,  of  that  union  of  the 
faculties  of  a  lawyer  and  a  statesman,  which  alone  can  satisfy 
the  exactions  of  this  highest  jurisdiction,  unequaled  and  unex 
ampled  in  any  judicature  in  the  world.  To  name  these  conspic 
uous  causes  merely,  without  unfolding  them,  would  carry  no 
impression  ;  and  time  fails  for  any  demonstrative  criticism  upon 
them. 

There  are  two  passages  in  the  judicial  service  of  Mr.  Chase 
which,  attracting  great  attention  and  exciting  some  difference  of 
opinion  at  the  time  of  the  transactions,  invite  a  brief  considera 
tion  at  your  hands. 

The  first  political  impeachment  in  our  constitutional  history, 
involving,  as  it  did,  the  accusation  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  required  the  Chief-Justice  to  preside  at  the  trial 
before  the  Senate,  creating  thus  the  tribunal  to  which  the  Con 
stitution  had  assigned  this  high  jurisdiction.  Beyond  the  in 
junction  that  the  Senate,  when  sitting  for  the  trial  of  impeach 
ments,  should  be  "  on  oath,"  the  Constitution  gave  no  instruction 
to  fix  or  ascertain  the  character  of  the  procedure,  the  nature  of 
the  duty  assigned  to  the  specially-organized  court,  or  the  distri 
bution  of  authority  between  the  Chief -Justice  and  the  Senate. 
The  situation  lacked  no  feature  of  gravity — no  circumstance  of 
solicitude — and  the  attention  of  the  whole  country,  and  of 
foreign  nations,  watched  the  transaction  at  every  stage  of  its 
progress.  No  circumstances  could  present  a  greater  disparity  of 
political  or  popular  forces  between  accuser  and  accused,  and  none 
could  be  imagined  of  more  thorough  commitment  of  the  body  of 
the  court — the  Senate — both  in  the  interests  of  its  members,  in 
their  political  feeling,  and  their  pre-judgments ;  all  tending  to 
make  the  condemnation  of  the  President,  upon  all  superficial 


23 

calculations,  inevitable.  The  effort  of  the  Constitution  to  guard 
against  mere  partisan  judgment,  by  requiring  a  two-third  vote 
to  convict,  was  paralyzed  by  the  complexion  of  the  Senate,  show 
ing  more  than  four-fifths  of  that  body  of  the  party  which  had 
instituted  the  impeachment  and  was  demanding  conviction.  To 
this  party,  as  well,  the  Chief-Justice  belonged,  as  a  founder,  a 
leader,  a  recipient  of  its  honors,  and  a  lover  of  its  prosperity  and 
its  fame.  The  President,  raised  to  the  office  from  that  of  Vice- 
President — to  which  alone  he  had  been  elected — by  the  deplored 
event  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  assassination,  was  absolutely  without  a 
party,  in  the  Senate  or  in  the  country ;  for  the  party  whose  suf 
frages  he  had  received  for  the  vice-presidency  was  the  hostile 
force  in  his  impeachment.  And,  to  bring  the  matter  to  the 
worst,  the  succession  to  all  the  executive  power  and  patronage 
of  the  Government,  in  case  of  conviction,  was  to  fall  into  the  ad 
ministration  of  the  President  of  the  Senate — the  creature,  thus, 
of  the  very  court  invested  with  the  duty  of  trial  and  the  power 
of  conviction. 

Against  all  these  immense  influences,  confirmed  and  inflamed 
by  a  storm  of  party  violence,  beating  against  the  Senate-house 
without  abatement  through  the  trial,  the  President  was  ac 
quitted.  To  what  wise  or  fortunate  protection  of  the  stability 
of  government  does  the  people  of  this  country  owe  its  escape 
from  this  great  peril  ?  Solely,  I  cannot  hesitate  to  think,  to  the 
potency— with  a  justice-loving,  law-respecting  people — of  the 
few  decisive  words  of  the  Constitution  which,  to  the  common 
apprehension,  had  impressed  upon  the  transaction  the  solemn 
character  of  trial  and  conviction,  under  the  sanction  of  the  oath 
to  bind  the  conscience,  and  not  of  the  mere  exercise  of  power,  of 
which  its  will  should  be  its  reason.  In  short,  the  Constitution 
had  made  the  procedure  judicial,  and  not  political.  It  was  this 
sacred  interposition  that  stayed  this  plague  of  political  resent 
ments  which,  with  their  less  sober  and  intelligent  populations, 
have  thwarted  so  many  struggles  for  free  government  and  equal 
institutions. 

Over  this  scene,  through  all  its  long  agitations,  the  Chief- 
Justice  presided,  with  firmness  and  prudence,  with  circumspect 
comprehension,  and  sagacious  forecast  of  the  vast  consequences 
which  hung,  not  upon  the  result  of  the  trial  as  affecting  any  per- 


24 

sonal  fortunes  of  the  President,  but  upon  the  maintenance  of 
its  character  as  a  trial — upon  the  prevalence  of  law,  and  the  su 
premacy  of  justice,  in  its  methods  of  procedure,  in  the  grounds 
and  reasons  of  its  conclusion.  That  his  authority  was  greatly 
influential  in  fixing  the  true  constitutional  relations  of  the  Chief  - 
Justice  to  the  Senate,  and  establishing  a  precedent  of  procedure 
not  easily  to  be  subverted ;  that  it  was  felt,  throughout  the  trial, 
with  persuasive  force,  in  the  maintenance  of  the  judicial  nature 
of  the  transaction ;  and  that  it  never  went  a  step  beyond  the 
office  which  belonged  to  him — of  presiding  over  the  Senate  try 
ing  an  impeachment — is  not  to  be  doubted. 

The  President  was  acquitted.  The  disappointment  of  the 
political  calculations  which  had  been  made  upon,  what  was  felt 
by  the  partisans  of  impeachment  to  be,  an  assured  result,  was 
unbounded ;  and  resentments,  rash  and  unreasoning,  were  vis 
ited  upon  the  Chief-Justice,  who  had  influenced  the  Senate  to 
be  judicial,  and  had  not  himself  been  political.  No  doubt,  this 
impeachment  trial  permanently  affected  the  disposition  of  the 
leading  managers  of  the  Republican  party  toward  the  Chief- 
Justice,  and  his  attitude  thereafter  toward  that  party,  in  his  char 
acter  of  a  citizen.  But  the  people  of  the  country  never  assumed 
any  share  of  the  resentment  of  party  feeling.  The  charge  against 
him,  if  it  had  any  shape  or  substance,  came  only  to  this :  that 
the  Chief-Justice  brought  into  the  Senate,  under  his  judicial 
robes,  no  concealed  weapons  of  party  warfare,  and  that  he  had 
not  plucked  from  the  Bible,  on  which  he  took  and  administered 
the  judicial  oath,  the  commandment  for  its  observance. 

Not  long  after  Mr.  Chase's  accession  to  the  bench  there 
came  before  the  court  a  question,  in  substance  and  in  form,  as 
grave  and  difficult  as  any  that  its  transcendent  jurisdiction  over 
the  validity  of  the  legislation  of  Congress,  has  ever  presented, 
or,  in  any  forecast  we  can  make  of  the  future,  will  ever  present 
for  its  judgment ;  I  mean  the  constitutionality  of  that  feature 
and  quality  of  the  issues  of  United  States  notes  during  the  war, 
which  made  them  a  legal  tender  for  the  satisfaction  of  private 
debts.  This  measure  was  one  of  the  great  administrative  ex 
pedients  for  marshaling  the  wealth  of  the  country,  as  rapidly, 
as  equally,  and  as  healthfully,  to  the  energies  of  production  and 
industry,  as  might  be,  and  so  as  seasonably  to  meet  the  immeas- 


urable  demands  of  the  public  service,  in  the  stress  of  the  war. 
That  it  was  debated  and  adopted,  with  full  cognizance  of  its 
critical  character,  and  with  extreme  solicitude  that  all  its  bear 
ings  should  be  thoroughly  explored,  and  upon  the  same  per 
emptory  considerations,  upon  which  the  master  of  a  ship  cuts 
away  a  mast  or  jettisons  cargo,  or  the  surgeon  amputates  a  limb, 
was  a  matter  of  history.  Mr.  Chase,  as  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury,  with  a  reluctance  and  repugnance  which  enhanced  the 
weight  of  his  counsels,  approved  the  measure,  as  one  of  neces 
sity  for  the  fiscal  operations  of  the  Government,  which  knew  no 
other  seasonable  or  adequate  recourse.  Upon  this  imposing  and 
authoritative  advice  of  the  financial  minister,  the  legal-tender 
trait  of  the  paper  issues  of  the  Government  was  adopted  by 
Congress,  and  without  his  sanction,  presumptively,  it  would  have 
been  denied. 

And  now,  when,  after  repeated  argument  at  the  bar,  and 
long  deliberations  of  the  court,  the  decision  was  announced,  the 
determining  opinion  of  the  Chief-Justice,  in  an  equal  division 
of  the  six  associate  justices,  pronounced  the  legal-tender  acts  un 
constitutional,  as  not  within  the  discretion  of  the  political  de 
partments  of  the  Government,  Congress,  and  the  Executive,  to 
determine  this  very  question  of  the  necessity  of  the  juncture,  as 
justifying  their  enactment. 

The  singularity  of  the  situation  struck  everybody,  and  greatly 
divided  public  sentiment  between  applause  and  reproaches  of 
the  Chief-Justice,  as  the  principal  figure  both  in  the  adminis 
trative  measure  and  in  its  judicial  condemnation.  But  soon,  a 
new  phase  of  the  unsettled  agitation  on  the  merits  of  the  consti 
tutional  question,  drew  public  attention,  and  created  even  greater 
excitement  of  feeling  and  diversity  of  sentiment.  The  court, 
which  had  been  reduced  by  Congress  under  particular  and  tem 
porary  motives,  hostile  to  the  appointing  power  of  President 
Johnson,  had  been  again  opened  by  Congress  to  its  permanent 
number,  and  its  vacancies  had  been  filled.  A  new  case,  involv 
ing  the  vexed  question,  was  heard  by  the  court,  and  the  validity 
of  the  disputed  laws  was  sustained  by  its  judgment.  The  signal 
spectacle  of  the  court,  which  had  judged  over  Congress  and  the 
Secretary,  now  judging  over  itself,  gave  rise  to  much  satire  on 
one  side  and  the  other,  and  to  some  coarseness  of  contumely  as 


26 

to  the  motives  and  the  means  of  these  eventful  mutations  in 
matters,  where  stability  and  uniformity  are,  confessedly,  of  the 
highest  value  to  the  public  interests,  and  to  the  dignity  of  gov 
ernment. 

Confessing  to  a  firm  approval  of  the  final  disposition  of  the 
constitutional  question  by  the  court,  I  concede  it  to  be  a  sub 
ject  of  thorough  regret  that  the  just  result  was  not  reached  by 
less  uncertain  steps.  But,  with  this  my  adverse  attitude  to  the 
Chief -Justice's  judicial  position  on  the  question,  I  find  no  diffi 
culty  in  discarding  all  suggestions  which  would  mix  up  political 
calculations  with  his  judicial  action.  The  error  of  the  Chief -Jus 
tice,  if,  under  the  last  judgment  of  the  court,  we  may  venture  so 
to  consider  it,  was  in  following  his  strong  sense  of  the  supreme 
importance  of  restoring  the  integrity  of  the  currency,  and  his 
impatience  and  despair  at  the  feebleness  of  the  political  depart 
ments  of  the  Government  in  that  direction,  to  the  point  of  con 
cluding  that  the  final  wisdom  of  this  great  question — inter 
apices  juris p,  as  well  as  of  the  highest  reasons  of  state — was  to 
deny  to  the  brief  exigency  of  war,  what  was  so  dangerous  to  the 
permanent  necessities  of  peace.  But  a  larger  reason  and  a  wider 
prudence,  as  it  would  seem,  favor  the  prevailing  judgment, 
which  refused  to  cripple  the  permanent  faculties  of  government 
for  the  unforeseen  duties  of  the  future,  and  drew  back  the  court 
from  the  perilous  edge  of  law-making,  which,  overpassed,  must 
react  to  cripple,  in  turn,  th6  essential  judicial  power.  The  past, 
thus,  was  not  discredited,  nor  the  future  disabled. 

I  have  now  carried  your  attention  to  the  round  of  public 
service  which  filled  the  life  of  Mr.  Chase  with  activity  and  use 
fulness,  and  yet  the  survey  and  the  lesson  are  incomplete  with 
out  some  reference  to  a  station  he  never  attained,  to  an  office 
he  never  administered ;  I  mean,  to  be  sure,  the  presidency.  It 
is  of  the  nature  of  this  great  place  of  power  and  trust,  and  the 
necessity  of  the  method  by  which  alone  it  can  be  reached,  to 
present  to  the  ambition  and  public  spirit  of  political  leaders, 
and  to  the  honest  hopes  and  enthusiasm  of  the  great  body  of 
the  people,  an  equally  frequent  disappointment.  This  is  not 
the  place  to  insist  upon  the  reasons  of  this  unquestionable  mis 
chief,  nor  to  attempt  to  point  out  the  escape  from  them,  if  in 
deed  the  problem  be  not,  in  itself,  too  hard  for  solution.  To 


27 

Mr.  Chase,  as  to  all  the  great  leaders  of  opinion  in  the  present 
and  perhaps  the  last  generation  of  our  public  men,  this  disap 
pointment  came,  and  in  his  case,  as  in  theirs,  brought  with  it 
the  defeat  of  the  hopes  and  desires  of  a  large  following  of  his 
countrymen,  who  sought,  through  his  accession  to  the  presidency, 
the  elevation  of  the  Government,  and  the  welfare  of  the  people. 

That  the  range  and  dignity  of  Mr.  Chase's  public  employ 
ments  and  the  large  capacity,  absolute  probity,  and  unbounded 
energy  which  he  had  shown  in  them,  justified  his  aspiration  to 
the  presidency,  and  the  public  calculations  of  great  benefit  from 
his  accession  to  it,  may  not  be  doubted.  In  this  state  of  things 
it  is  obvious,  that  he  would  necessarily  be  greatly  in  the  minds 
of  men,  as  a  candidate  for  the  candidacy,  and  this,  too,  whether 
they  favored  or  opposed  it,  without  any  implication  of  undue 
activity  of  desire,  much  less  of  effort,  on  his  part,  to  obtain  the 
nomination.  But,  it  was  not  in  the  fortunes  of  Mr.  Chase's 
life  to  take  the  flood  of  any  tide,  in  the  restless  sea  of  our  poli 
tics,  which  led  on  to  the  presidency.  In  1860  there  was  no 
principle  and  no  policy  of  the  Republican  party  which  could 
tolerate  the  postponement  of  Mr.  Seward  to  Mr.  Chase,  if  a 
political  leader  was  to  be  put  in  nomination.  In  1864:  the  para 
mount  considerations  of  absolute  supremacy,  which  dictated  the 
reelection  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  would  endure  no  competition  of  can 
didates  in  the  Republican  party.  In  1868,  when  each  party 
seemed,  in  an  unusual  degree,  free  to  seek  and  find  its  candi 
dates  where  it  would,  Mr.  Chase  was  Chief- Justice,  and  no  issue 
of  the  public  safety  existed,  which  alone,  in  the  settled  convic 
tions  of  this  people,  would  favor  a  political  canvass  by  the  head 
of  the  judiciary. 

In  a  just  yie.w  of  the  office  of  President,  as  framed  in  the 
Constitution,  which  he  only,  in  the  whole  establishment  of  the 
Government,  is  sworn  "  to  preserve,  protect,  and  defend,"  and 
of  the  rightful  demands  of  this  people  from  its  supreme  ma 
gistracy,  I  am  sure  most  people  will  agree  that  Mr.  Chase  pos 
sessed  great  qualities  for  the  discharge  of  its  high  duties,  and 
for  the  maintenance  of  good  government  in  difficult  times. 
These  qualifications  I  have  already  unfolded  from  his  life. 
If,  indeed,  the  great  hold  over  the  Government,  which  the 
Constitution  secures  to  the  people  by  the  election  of  the  Presi- 


28 

dent,  and  his  direct  and  constant  responsibility  to  popular  opin 
ion,  and  the  fall  powers,  thus  safely  confided '  to  him,  in  the 
name  and  as  the  trust  of  the  people  at  large — if  this  hold  is  to 
be  exercised  and  preserved  in  its  appropriate  vigor,  it  can  only 
be  by  the  election  to  the  presidency  of  true  leaders  of  the  politi 
cal  opinion  of  the  country.  In  *  this  way  alone  can  power  and 
responsibility  be  kept  in  union ;  and  any  nation  which,  in  the 
working  of  its  government,  sees  them  divorced — sees  power 
without  responsibility,  and  responsibility  without  power — must 
expect  dishonor  and  disaster  in  its  affairs. 

I  have,  thus,  with  such  success  as  may  be,  undertaken  to 
separate  the  thread  of  this  individual  character  and  action  from 
that  woven  tapestry  of  human  life,  whose  conciliated  colors  and 
collective  force  make  up  one  of  the  noblest  chapters  of  history. 
I  have  attempted  to  present  in  prominent  points,  passing  per 
fastigia  rerum,  the  worth,  the  work,  the  duty,  and  the  honor 
which  fill  out  "  the  sustained  dignity  of  this  stately  life."  From 
his  boyhood  on  the  banks  of  this  fair  river — famous  as  having 
given  birth  and  nurture  to  three  Chief-Justices  of  the  United 
States,  Ellsworth,  Chase,  and  Waite ;  through  his  first  lessons 
in  the  humanities  in  beautiful  Windsor,  his  fuller  instruction 
in  the  lap  of  this  gracious  mother,  his  loved  and  venerated 
Dartmouth  ;  through  his  lessons  in  law  and  in  eloquence  at  the 
feet  of  his  great  master,  "Wirt,  his  study  of  statesmen  and  gov 
ernment  at  the  capital ;  through  his  faithful  service  to  the  law, 
that  jealous  mistress,  and  his  generous  advocacy  of  the  rights, 
and  resentment  of  the  wrongs,  of  the  unfriended  and  the  un 
defended  ;  through  his  season  of  stormy  politics  with  its  "  estua- 
tions  of  joys  and  fears ; "  through  the  crush  and  crowd  of  labors 
and  solicitudes  which  beset  him  as  minister  of  finance  in  the 
tensions  and  perils  of  war ;  through  all  this  steep  ascent  to  the 
serene  height  of  supreme  jurisprudence,  this  life,  but  a  span  in 
years,  was  enough  for  the  permanent  service  of  his  country,  and 
for  the  assurance  of  his  fame.  "  Etenim,,  Quirites,  exiguum  no- 
bis  vitce  curriculum  natura  circumscripsit^  immensum  glorice" 

If  I  should  attempt  to  compare  Mr.  Chase,  either  in  resem 
blance  or  contrast,  with  the  great  names  in  our  public  life,  of 
our  own  times,  and  in  our  previous  history,  I  should  be  inclined 
to  class  him,  in  the  solidity  of  his  faculties,  the  firmness  of  his 


29 

will,  and  in  the  moderation  of  Ins  temper,  and  in  the  quality  of 
his  public  services,  with  that  remarkable  school  of  statesmen, 
who,  through  the  Revolutionary  War,  wrought  out  the  indepen 
dence  of  their  country,  which  they  had  declared,  and  framed  the 
Constitution,  by  which  the  new  liberties  were  consolidated  and 
their  perpetuity  insured.  Should  I  point  more  distinctly  at 
individual  characters,  whose  traits  he  most  recalls,  Ellsworth  as 
a  lawyer  and  judge,  and  Madison  as  a  statesman,  would  seem 
not  only  the  most  like,  but  very  like,  Mr.  Chase.  In  the  groups 
of  his  cotemporaries  in  public  affairs,  Mr.  Chase  is  always  named 
with  the  most  eminent.  In  every  triumvirate  of  conspicuous 
activity  he  would  be  naturally  associated.  Thus,  in  the  prelimi 
nary  agitations  which  prepared  the  triumphant  politics,  it  is 
Chase  and  Simmer  and  Hale ;  in  the  competition  for  the  presi 
dency  when  the  party  expected  to  carry  it,  it  is  Seward  and 
Lincoln  and  Chase ;  in  administration,  it  is  Stanton  and  Seward 
and  Chase ;  in  the  Senate,  it  is  Chase  and  Seward  and  Simmer. 
All  these  are  newly  dead,  and  we  accord  them  a  common  hom 
age  of  admiration  and  of  gratitude,  not  yet  to  be  adjusted  or 
weighed  out  to  each. 

Just  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  Mr.  Chase  left  these  halls 
of  learning,  the  college  sent  out  another  scholar  of  her  disci 
pline,  with  the  same  general  traits  of  birth,  and  condition,  and 
attendant  influences,  which  we  have  noted  as  the  basis  of  the 
power  and  influence  of  this  later  son  of  Dartmouth.  He  played 
a  famous  part  in  his  time  as  lawyer,  senator,  and  minister  of 
state,  in  all  the  greatest  affairs,  and  in  all  the  highest  spheres  of 
public  action;  and  to  his  eloquence  his  countrymen  paid  the 
singular  homage,  with  which  the  Greeks  crowned  that  of  Peri 
cles,  who  alone  was  called  Olympian  for  his  grandeur  and  his 
power.  He  died  with  the  turning  tide  from  the  old  statesman 
ship  to  the  new,  then  'opening,  now  closed,  in  which  Mr.  Chase 
and  his  cotemporaries  have  done  their  work  and  made  their 
fame.  Twenty-one  years  ago  this  venerable  college,  careful  of 
the  memory  of  one  who  had  so  greatly  served  as  well  as  honored 
her,  heard  from  the  lips  of  Choate  the  praise  of  Webster. 
What  lover  of  the  college,  what  admirer  of  genius  and  eloquence, 
can  forget  the  pathetic  and  splendid  tribute  which  the  con 
summate  orator  paid  to  the  mighty  fame  of  the  great  statesman  ? 


30 

What  mattered  it  to  him,  or  to  the  college,  that,  for  the  moment, 
this  fame  was  checked  and  clouded,  in  the  divided  judgments 
of  his  countrymen,  by  the  rising  storms  of  the  approaching 
struggle  ?  But,  instructed  by  the  experience  of  the  vanquished 
rebellion,  none  are  now  so  dull  as  not  to  see  that  the  consoli 
dation  of  the  Union,  the  demonstration  of  the  true  doctrine  of 
the  Constitution,  the  solicitous  observance  of  every  obligation 
of  the  compact,  were  the  great  preparations  for  the  final  issue 
of  American  politics  between  freedom  and  slavery. 

To  these  preparations  the  life-work  of  Webster  and  his  as 
sociates  was  devoted;  their  completeness  and  adequacy  have 
been  demonstrated ;  the  force  and  magnitude  of  the  explosion 
have  justified  all  their  solicitudes  lest  it  should  burst  the  cohe 
sions  of  our  unity.  The  general  sense  of  our  countrymen  now 
understands  that  the  statesmen  who  did  the  most  to  secure  the 
common  government  for  slavery  and  freedom  under  the  frame 
of  the  Constitution,  and  who  in  the  next  generations  did  the 
most  to  strengthen  the  bonds  of  the  Union,  and  to  avert  the  last 
test  till  that  strength  was  assured ;  and,  in  our  own  latest  times, 
did  the  most  to  make  the  contest  at  last  become  seasonable 
and  safe,  thorough  and  unyielding  and  unconditional,  have  all 
wrought  out  the  great  problem  of  our  statesmanship,  which  was 
to  assure  to  us  "  Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and 
inseparable."  They  all  deserve,  as  they  shall  all  receive,  each 
for  his  share,  the  gratitude  of  their  countrymen,  and  the  applause 
of  the  world. 

To  the  advancing  generations  of  youth  that  Dartmouth  shall 
continue  to  train  for  the  service  of  the  republic,  and  the  good 
of  mankind,  the  lesson  of  the  life  we  commemorate,  to-day,  is 
neither  obscure  nor  uncertain.  The  toils  and  honors  of  the  past 
generations  have  not  exhausted  the  occasions  nor  the  duties  of 
our  public  life,  and  the  preparation  for  them,  whatever  else  it 
may  include,  can  never  omit  the  essential  qualities  which  have 
always  marked  every  prosperous  and  elevated  career.  These 
are  energy,  labor,  truth,  courage,  and  faith.  These  make  up 
that  ultimate  WISDOM  to  which  the  moral  constitution  of  the 
world  assures  a  triumph. — "  Wisdom  is  the  principal  thing ;  she 
shall  bring  thee  to  honor ;  she  shall  give  to  thy  head  an  orna 
ment  of  grace ;  a  crown  of  glory  shall  she  deliver  to  thee." 


14  DAY  USE 

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